Inyana was questioned at the Chapel by Deacon Thristaine fairly politely, and then released. Sir Not came later that day to announce that she would not be questioned further and you should be thankful for friends in high places; later you learned that Big Ron had refused the Deacon's request to extradite her to Nikasadros for exorcism of the heathen spirits possessing her. Ahappi warned the trolls to avoid the Church folks and Captain Lars sent them “data collecting” for “Chelicerata” in the island interior. Sir Not also said that he'd spoken to Lars and “not refuted” their story of Brother Huriste's fate, but remained suspicious. He exclaimed that it was futile for them; they'd be cast into a pit of demons anyway whereas good Rokari like him would rise into Solace. Ahappi was not pleased.
Ciddar had vanished then reappeared with some of the folks from the manor including Lynistor, Oomsh and Sir Boamund; then Ciddar vanished again during Lars's extended birthday party at the Nameless Inn. The latter party turned into a brief brawl when rogues from Nolos decided to take the opportunity to rough up some locals, but were quickly discouraged from trying the same on the Baronet/Inyana and Captain. The St Humct guards showed up when Sheelagh whistled an alert, but simply watched to ensure no weapons were used and those that fell were left alone. The Captain began a chorus of “Happy Birthday” to Captain Lars as the fracas settled down, and the party was rejoined with vigour. A stranger leaning against a nearby hovel was not noticed, but noticed much, although he did not follow you to the Keep for the night. A growing affection between Inyana and the Baronet was quite evident by the end of the night. Lynistor attempted to interfere but was gently rebuffed by Inyana.
The next day Sir Not came to “collect” you for a meeting at the Chapel. The Deacon explained that his investigation of your actions and Huriste's death had concluded and it was time to move forward. He said the Archdeacon sent a request for an update on the search for the Saints' Weapons. You gave him that update and shared information on the documents your two groups had on the “High Necromancer's Library”, which the Deacon said belonged to the great Seshnelan sorcerer Yomil. He remained confused how the Library tied into the weapon-search but it seemed the best lead you had, and he was intrigued and concerned by such an evil place's existence on Giraine.
The Baronet announced, to much surprise, that he and Inyana would be married, and the Deacon was delighted to offer the Chapel as the obvious choice for hosting the auspicious event. Thristaine also suggested that there be a “wedding” of your and the Church's teams in the hunt for the Library, and introduced Vicar Rupert Defachez as the more stalwart replacement for Huriste. Rupert's pet project had been the Evracian Monastery, and he was reknown as a local troublemaker/fomenter of discord between the colonists and Giranois as well as Baron Ron and the Church, so you did not consider it to be “trading up”. News of his morning sermon of “The Danger of New Strangers” did not sit well with you either- the timing fit too well with Inyana's appearance and his interest in her.
Soon you came to the Baronet's manor in the swamp and the Shaven family was reunited. Cyroosta showed the Baronet and Lynistor her collection of “naughty pots” in her chambers, one set representing the favours Fraud owed her, and one set for the times that Lynistor had annoyed her. She chided them to work better together - Fraud must stay out of local trouble and Lynistor must try to do some good in the world. She was upset about all the news of the dead Brother, surprising wedding, and yet another dangerous adventure for her sons so soon, but resigned to these events as part of the lot of the Shaven family's fate.
The Mud Hag had appeared when you arrived at the Manor, offering services for a sacrifice, but with all the Rokari present it did not seem appropriate. Cyroosta called it forth later that night with Sir Boamund (And Lynistor sneaking a peek), and it gave a new riddle- “Beyond the black that hides the gates, within the walls where souls abate, you'll find good men with words of fate, but loose no sound to the doom that waits.”
You set off for the Library with your decoded map and documents, along with the Vicar, Sir Boamund, Lynistor, his flunkies and Ooomsh, and plenty of supplies. You passed the brooding expanse of Burnt Priest's Hill and then saw more and more signs of Giranois as you traversed the badlands and cliffs of northern Giraine. One night the Baronet heard someone stealthy approaching and then saw they had left a death-rune totem of beetle shells, bits of bone and sinew– a Giranois sign of a feud declared against you. Soon you were being shadowed, then your path blocked by a warband of the Gratt clan, led by the clever warrior Shrett. He parleyed with Shaven and the Captain and first asked for you to kill the “metal men” (the Knights had secretly come this way ahead of you) or become part of his blood feud which was supported by the fearsome Sharde clan who had come to Burnt Priest's Hill.
But then as Shrett pondered this while your group debated what to do, he grew more and more nervous as he knew even his 15 warriors/hunters could not defeat you. He knew stories of the Baronet and Captain, and those two spoke eloquently and convincingly to him about their differences from the Rokari. But he was concerned about the ruins called Yomilstone that lay within the distant Wizardwood- the elders had told him that it was “but a faded nightmare, a shadow of the past, that St Granno left as a reminder of the doom that befalls sorcerers. There is nothing real there but memories. But it is a forbidden place of evil omen and we are sworn to kill those that go there; trespassers will fade away too.”. Crafty as he was, he accepted a gift of the Captain's sword and promises of help in return for information on the Wizardwood and Yomilstone, in defiance of his elders.
Boamund's expert tracking and eyesight soon found the Wizardwood down a canyon, concealed from the view from the high ground. Tracks of the Knights' warhorses showed they had come through recently but just missed the wood. You entered the silent, calm, lush green wood where the light grew dim and there was no life other than the foreign plants. You found bits of ruins and soon a sizeable shell of a brick building, then as night fell you spotted the great baroque gate of “Yomilstone” through the trees. It was a huge shadowy construction that could only be seen from one side, and there were only sparse stacks of drystones decorated with amphibian bones and a cold dark old well beyond.
You tried a few tricks to make the locked gates within the great gate's archway appear, and finally the Baronet used his Darkstrike spell to throw magical darkness into the empty space there. The same gates that you'd seen drawn in the old documents faded into appearance there, and the Captain used his key to open them. Once again the Vicar kneeled in prayer, after invoking the bright light of his “Rod of Plain Witness,” which temporarily disrupted the gate. The gate solidified into cold solid lead and you tentatively went inside.
Inside you found another place, partly preserved from Time but still crumbling. Stone walls marked off a courtyard surrounded by impenetrable darkness. The gates closed behind you. There were many scattered bones, brambles, ruins and rubble, and odd rune-carved sticks topped with rune-carved masks and skulls. Some of you could see, using magic vision, shadowy figures crouched behind the masks… The same well was there but full of a massive bramble-tree, and then finally there was the great library building. It was boldly formed as an Undeath/Hunger rune and had double doors facing you. You forced open the doors to see a decrepit hallway filled with debris, bones and shattered skeletons.
A figure strode forward as you entered- it was a skeleton in ornate wizard's robes with a thin metal staff/wand. It was the “Greeter” and said you were the “701st visitors in 701 years,” then asked what the “Master” had sent you for. When you replied that you wished to know some lines from a book (following the Hag's riddle), it directed you to a set of double doors down the hall to the right; the “waiting room.”
Inside that room there were two chairs, one holding a bloody-faced zombie woman in thick black wizard's robes who seemed to be reading a black book, and the other which the Baronet was directed to sit in. The others explored the room and saw an elaborate painting on the far wall (showing an undead thing riding a horse with a dying man, a crouched robed figure not dissimilar to the reading zombie-woman, and some other details including what looked like a hobbled Waertagi). A disturbing clockwork demonic/skeletal plaque was opposite it along that wall, and a single door leading back into the courtyard.
The Greeter called forth the Scrivener from another room. That creature was stranger still- a blend of mechanical and human parts with an extra set of legs projecting horizontally from its waist and supporting a rectangular “desk” with reading and writing materials. The zombie-woman grew interested and set down her book then walked over, dribbling black blood from her mouth as she stood by the Baronet's side. The Greeter told the Baronet to “ask” then write his request down, clarifying one question he wanted answered, and the Scrivener left with the written note then soon returned with a book clothed in cyanotic “leather”, called “Onne the Resurreckshun of Goode Menne.” Like many things here, the book emanated a sinister chill. The Scrivener opened the book and you saw words appear:
“To be read at the Tower of Goode Menne: i. Good men come, and good men go. ii. Reverse the ties that bind them so. iii. Tower rise from ground so low, iv. From this site a beacon glow!”
And so your quest seemed completed. But the Vicar decided to take a pious risk- he invoked the bright power of his Rod of Plain Witness. Havoc erupted! The zombie-woman screamed and the clockwork-plaque rang out a medley of alarms! Howls echoed from the outer courtyard! Your way out was blocked by the Greeter and Scrivener who stood at the waiting room doors. The zombie-woman chased the Vicar to the exterior door; opening it he found a terrible flayed ghoul-thing howling there, which frightened several of you. The Oomsh found this all quite upsetting and bathed the area in its Armistice light, rendering all of you pacified but having few clear effects on the undead. Lynistor did a nice Seshnegi courtly dance with the zombie-woman and the Baronet sat in her chair, looking at the cover of her necromantic book “Of Blood Dranke and Spil'd” then returning it to the Scrivener.
The Vicar ran outside and was pursued then caught by masked bestial demons, who paraded him into the main doors and eventually into a torture chamber past the book collection room, which the Greeter guarded with powerful force-blasting magic. But the Oomsh's Armistice spell made most of you ineffectual as the undead and demonic horde gathered outside and started to venture inside in search of fresh blood and flesh. A flayed, metal-bolted man wielding an iron bludgeon came after the Baronet and pursued him into the hallway with the Captain and Boamund, who then were released from the Armistice. Boamund called forth a circle of flame to protect the three of them, and together they fought off a series of bramble, zombie-dragonewts who breathed deadly frost, multi-eyed demons and more howling flayed men. The Baronet blinded and felled the tortured metal-bound man and you were ready to flee to the courtyard, feeling unable to save the Vicar who was trying his best to blind and escape from the four Wizard-Hunter demons who wanted to bind then delicately flay him. You abandoned the waiting room as more flayed-men broke inside but they did not manage to penetrate into the hallway where you were trapped.
Then a pinpoint of light at the gates' keyhold expanded into a fierce white light and flame, and the gates hissed away, pierced by the fiery lances of the implacable Order of the Vengeful Word knights, to whom no barrier could hold against the powers of the Rokari Inquisition! They were met by the slavering horde of demons and undead, which were crushed under warhorse hooves and hewed by swords or pierced by lances as they fought their way toward the library. A great four-armed and winged zombie great troll flew forth from a black pit in the courtyard and pinned one knight with a block of rubble. This initially seemed to horrible to defeat but the knights' lances rent great holes in its head and it collapsed! They dismounted and entered the library, ignoring your warnings that the Greeter would not let them into the collections to save the Vicar.
You took this opportunity to flee for the gap where the gates used to be. Lynistor prayed to Rokari to save his loyal people, then cried out to stop the heretics as they fled. Baronet Shaven had enough of his brother's treachery and used his Darkstrike to blind and abandon him there. Then a flood of squirming maggots burst forth from the library, carrying knights and a surrounded, blind, pleading Lynistor with it. Outside the gates in the real world, a foul stench of rot blasted forth. The wood was coated in a thin veneer of frost that soon melted, leaving the dawn greenery of the wood to quickly rot. About 12 hours had passed in a few minutes in the High Necromancer's Library, and you were glad not to spend a second more! Boamund found a note in Seshnegi that the Vicar had left: “Gate unlocked in magical Darkness only. Be silent inside. Take nothing out.”– apparently the Knights deigned not to heed this, but he had directed them here.
The shadow-gate manifested itself again; the Knights's prayers and powerful Inquisition magics had only temporarily disrupted its magick. And a greater menace had been disturbed by this… You would not know it, but within that bubble outside time and space, a short Pithdaran nobleman was being forced to read the entire, horrific library collections and then joined the lady “Last Patron” in the waiting room. A new book was added to the collection, “The Plain Witness of Vicar Rupert Defachez”, shrouded in a dark-skinned leather cover with two pleading eyes looking around it for some hope or pure light but finding none. And seven suits of armour, their contents digested by a sea of maggots, awaited to be filled by newly constituted material, heralded by something that climbed up an endless staircase into the abyssal black… Yomilstone had earned its fearsome reputation yet again. And the Rod of Plain Witness, dropped in the courtyard, had seen much of it.
But your trouble was far from over. You hurried, taking Lynistor's lackey and supplies with you, downhill with speed, gathering a growing retinue of Giranois followers. Then as you approached Burnt Priest's Hill you were surrounded and funnelled onto the plateau, where a warleader of the Sharde clan accosted you, claiming that you would be their sacrifices for the misdeeds of the Knights and trespassing within Yomilstone. The Captain spoke with great passion and conviction that he was not the same as all the other wall-men and wizards, and that indeed your goals were in alignment with theirs.
You exchanged arguments- they grew less excited about sacrificing you and more intrigued by how wall-men could ever mean or do well, but still concerned that you had done terrible things that would bear ill fruits in coming times. You learned that St Granno had defeated Yomil and some greater foe, with hints that you might have set back his pious efforts. Also the Sharde apparently had fought or confronted St Lelbic in the past and defeated him; your tales of the Four Saints did not impress them. Finally the warleader relented that your efforts might have had a net positive effect, and maybe you could be spared, but that the coming winter would reveal the truth, and the judgement of the Sharde Giranois would fall upon you when that truth was apparent. You were reluctantly released and the Sharde were disappointed to have no priests or wizards to burn that day (but a quick raid on colonists along the coasts soon sated their bloodlust, you'd find out later!).
You returned back to the manor and mother Cyroosta was crestfallen to hear that she had lost one son and the other had fallen into yet more trouble! She would not even speak of the wedding or Princess but you heard the two of them had shown glimmers of friendship.
but the finale of your quest was at hand– the “tower of goode menne!” boamund blessed you with sorceries of light and life-skin and you opened the sealed staircase to a foul stench of the dead that you'd left there. you descended into the “top” submerged chamber with the captain, boamund and baronet, who then recited the four magic verses.
The tower convulsed and you were flushed up/downwards with the sludge, debris and water that it had held. Its parts everted upwards, looking to onlookers like an enormous giant penis that penetrated the sky– and their eyes grew wide with fear and revulsion as its peak was revealed… The form of a great horned Law rune, which every Malkioni knew to be the sign of evil Vadel, traitor to the faith and false prophet to the Vadeli!
What have you done, what fools have you been played for, what shall you do now…? Makan preserve us all!
© Copyright - 2000-2024 - John Hutchinson, Tim Evans, Pete Nash, Colin Driver and Gordon Alford